And from his little distance, the Singer heard her use his very words.

“Are you betrothed?” the buyer asked her.

“No, only loved,” she answered.

“And do you pay for love?”

“No, but I owe it everything.”

XII

In hell there is no music—an agonizing night that never ends as songless as a shattered violin.

“Sing the Hillside Song!” they cried.

There were so many of them. He wasn’t even sure he could be heard above the din of all their voices. He walked among them and looked them over. In his mind he knew that the Father-Spirit wanted each of them to learn his song.

Someone in the sprawling crowd stood and handed him a lyre. “Sing for us please Singer—the Hillside Song!”

“Yes, yes,” they called, “the Hillside Song.”

He looked down at the lyre and held it close. He turned each thumbset till the string knew how to sound, then he began:

“Blessed are the musical,” he said, “for theirs shall be a never-ending song.”

“Blessed are those who know the difference between their loving and their lusting, for they shall be pure in heart and understand the reason.”

“Blessed are those who die for reasons that are real, for they themselves are real.”

“Blessed are all those who yet can sing when all the theater is empty and the orchestra is gone.”

“Blessed is the man who stands before the cruelest king and only fears his God.”

“Blessed is the mighty king who sits beside the weakest man and thinks of all their similarities.”

“Earthmaker is love. He has sent his only Troubadour to close the Canyon of the Damned.”

Then they broke his song and cried out with one voice, “Tell us Singer, have you any hope for us? Can we be saved?”

“You may if you will sing Earthmaker’s Song!”

“Is there another way to cheat the Canyon of the Damned?”

“None but the Song!”

XIII

No person ever is so helpless as the man in whom joy and misery sleep comfortably together.

No physician can give health and happiness to the man who enjoys his affliction. For such a man health and happiness are always contradictory.

From night to day and back to night again he travelled on. He saw the glow of the great city, far on the horizon, and just the light of it roused expectancy and fear. By twilight he was weary and he turned aside to sleep beside a moonlit stream. The water fell in froth and white cascades into the wooden lattice of a creaking wheel.

The Miller who was still at work seemed most determined to finish out his toil by starlight. It was only by the merest chance he found the Singer sleeping by the stream just above the giant wheel.

For a moment he saw the Singer only as a vagrant and was inclined to drive him from the premises. But then he changed his mind and invited him to share the evening meal.

As they went into the grain room, the Singer looked upon the great machine which turned the giant stones which milled the grist.